Check out our forum too for a lot of additional content! Show us what you have created with Coherent UI or directly ask us anything.

Coherent UI has arrived to mobile devices!Coherent UI Mobile is currently in beta. It is (and always will be) available in all our current Coherent Labs products for Unity at no additional cost. There also is a standalone version for developer who work only on mobile applications.Read more here!

Coherent UI is a graphical User Interface system specially designed for games. Game developers and UI artists can use standard modern HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript to create game interface and interaction. Companies can save time and money, leveraging existing skills to implement the UI, as there is no special knowledge needed to use the system.

We have already made available Coherent UI as a library on every desktop platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and of course .NET (fully compatible with Mono, SlimDX, SharpDX and XNA). We are also the only HTML5-based solution to support x64 binaries. We are now turning our attention towards mobile and consoles.

The features we like the most include:

HTML5

CSS3

WebGL

GPU accelerated rendering

High-performance JavaScript virtual machine (based on V8 )

Powerful data binding

SSL

Social integration

Debugger and performance monitor

Download support

With Coherent UI you can not only build your whole interface using HTML5, CSS3 JavaScript but also have fully-featured in-game browsers and social integration with Facebook, Twitter, Google+ etc..

This is a video of our experimental CryEngine 3 integration (make sure to watch it in HD):

Mobile Unity3D integration!

How could you make Coherent UI part of your workflow?
Anyone with even basic web-development knowledge can create beautiful user interfaces with Coherent UI.
The interface is built in any web-development environment using modern HTML5. Any JavaScript library(JQuery, KendoUI etc.) can be used out of the box to facilitate the design process. One of our goals was to allow you to leverage existing technologies and concentrate on more important things like making your game even more fun.
The created pages can be viewed and edited in any modern browser. After that they'll work without modification in the game.
The solution is fully compatible with WebInspector so you can edit JavaScript and the page appearance live while the game is running. You don't even have to re-run the game so iteration times are cut substantially.
The powerful binding interfaces allow for Unity scripts to call or be called from the JavaScript in your interface when more complex logic is required.

We built Coherent UI to allow for full in-game browsing. It supports cookies, local store, SSL, WebAudio and even Flash so all pages in the world are just a few clicks away. You could even have games-in-the game!
You need secure micro-transactions in your game? No problem - just point Coherent UI to the relevant part of your website and reuse the interface you already have. You won't have to worry about billing your clients through the game script because Coherent UI will be the one connecting as a normal browser through SSL.

We have embedded full social integration in Coherent UI that allows you to connect painlessly your players through Facebook, Twitter and any site supporting the OAuth protocol. This allows you to add achievements, bragging and even chat through social networks. We think that players shouldn't search again for their friend in the game when they are already connected through some other service.

Coherent UI in Unity 4 with DirectX 11 rendering and x64 build

Quick Tutorial #1
Our first short tutorial performs the following steps:

Import the Coherent UI package

Create an in-game object with a web page on it

Interact with a web page in the game

Add a HUD powered by Coherent UI

Build the game

Tutorial Explained
1. We load an empty scene and add a floor, a light and a cube on which we'll project what in Coherent UI terms we call a 'View'. A view is something that Coherent UI renders - that could be a HUD element, a projected web page, an animation - anything wrapped in an HTML page.

2. We add a character controller so that we can move around

3. We import the Coherent UI package. The component we are interested in this tutorial is 'CoherentUIView'. We drag it on one of the faces of the cube. All the various properties of the View are editable in the Inspector. By default it will load google.com. Let's hit 'Play'.
4. We can see the web page on the game object in Unity!

5. We change the web page and the resolution.

6. Now we have a nicer page in a better resolution.

7. The next thing is to make the page interactable. To do this we add a Mesh Collider component to the mesh. Then a UserScipt component that just handles the raycast and mouse button translation to the Coherent UI View. We also add some code to the camera to stop it from receiving when we hit 'L', otherwise it's very hard to click on anything with the mouse-look on. That's it - the View is now fully interactable.

8. Now for the HUD - we just drag the 'CoherentUIView' component on our Main Camera. We have made the HUD resources and copy them in our project and set the View's Page property to coui://TestPages/demo/demo.html.
'coui' is a special protocol we use to signal that the resource is local and subject to loading through the file handlers supplied by the application. In this way you can use a custom resource manager as well as for instance encrypt your UI data. The HUD looks pixelated because the resolution we set does not coincide with the one of the Editor pane. It will however be OK in the game when we build it. In your games the resolution will always be tied to the actual resolution of the Camera (the back-buffer).

9. The Coherent UI integration handles all cases and detects if the component is attached to and object in the world or a camera. It is compatible with post effects. We can add an effect on the camera. By default that effect will be applied to the View also. However this might not be desirable so by clicking 'Apply After Post-Effects' you can disable them on the View.

10. We now just have to build the game. Coherent UI resources will automatically be copied and made available at runtime.

All Coherent UI rendering happens in the native C++ plugin so it's impact on the performance of your game should be minimal.

Check out our site and the samples to get a taste. You could also check our blog where we often write about the development of the library.

Dunno why no reply yet, but I was thinking about such a UI system some time now and I think this is prety awesome. If we are able to use the output or somehow put in the workflow tools like Adobe Edge or Sencha Animator, well...I think thats even more awesome.

Dunno why no reply yet, but I was thinking about such a UI system some time now and I think this is prety awesome. If we are able to use the output or somehow put in the workflow tools like Adobe Edge or Sencha Animator, well...I think thats even more awesome.

Click to expand...

There is no problem to use these tools to create content and use it in Coherent UI. Anything that produces HTML, CSS and JS can be used without limitations. Part of the interface in our demos is indeed made with Adobe Edge.

There is no problem to use these tools to create content and use it in Coherent UI. Anything that produces HTML, CSS and JS can be used without limitations. Part of the interface in our demos is indeed made with Adobe Edge.

Click to expand...

Superb then! Whats left is how we actually implement this in the game . Will be waiting for more info on the Unity implementation part.
Thanks

We are on fire! Due to our Unity3D integration we had to accelerate the implementation of our support for client applications with multi-threaded rendering architectures (as is Unity). Check out the details here.

do you have any beta stage where unity users can participate and give feedback?

Click to expand...

We already have a fully functional version (also a Free one) for .NET and C++ clients, so if you are very eager to try it, you can download them. We plan a beta for the Unity version to land in approximately two weeks, so stay tuned.

I'm a little bit confused about this product. I've been looking for a webkit-style html renderer for ages now, mainly because my product would operate much better if that were the primary UI (think long scrollable pages, tables, forms and input handled by forms, etc.). Is that what coherent UI can do or is it limited to just HTML5?

Also as well as the other build targets will it also support Linux, Android, etc. ? What is the expected pricing for the mobile versions?

I'm a little bit confused about this product. I've been looking for a webkit-style html renderer for ages now, mainly because my product would operate much better if that were the primary UI (think long scrollable pages, tables, forms and input handled by forms, etc.). Is that what coherent UI can do or is it limited to just HTML5?

Also as well as the other build targets will it also support Linux, Android, etc. ? What is the expected pricing for the mobile versions?

Click to expand...

Yes, Coherent UI can do all that. It could be used as an in-game browser so it supports rendering and interaction with all web pages you can think of as well as input forms, SSL, cookies etc. It was always designed as a UI solution so it is very fast and tries to address all the usual problems that I think bother people when working on UI - built-in click-through support, great font rendering even on transparent surface (clear type could be a real pain), super easy data binding, easy localization etc. The core HTML layout engine is WebKit. I think it would be a perfect fit for your needs.

It already supports Linux. Android is planned in the near future but I can't give an exact date for when it'll be ready.

I'm not personally aware what the price will be as I am in the development team but as far as I know it'll be very reasonable for the Unity versions and they will have all the features of the more expensive C++ libraries.

We are releasing our Unity Beta version in the next few days so you will be able to try it yourself and hopefully I'll know more about the pricing and be more helpful about that

We natively support DirectX 11 rendering so with the new Unity 4 you can use that renderer. The performance improvement is between 30% and 50% compared to the DirectX 9 - based pipeline in Unity 3.5. The video also shows running on Windows 8 and the x64 build.

Currently mobile support is in alpha. We hope to release it in the following months. We are very focused on delivering the same high performance we do on Desktop machines on mobile platforms too, so we take our time

I requested for beta version of your API and i already got it and i tested it Unity 3.5 and 4.0 pro vesion, but i am constantly getting error. There error message saying "DllNotFoundException". I imported a unity package in a new project and follow your instruction step by step. I already have Plugin and streaming Assets folders in my Assets. I also checked there is "CoherentUI_WrapperNet.dll" also present in my plugin folder.

Grabbed the beta. Very promising. I've been testing it in conjunction with NGUI and can't get a transparent CoherentUIViewer working ( using the standard transparent/diffuse shader ). Everything works perfectly with the google.com cube demo ( both transparent and opaque when accessing my custom local web page ), but I can't get transparency working on a plane when it's dropped into an NGUI camera hierarchy. It only seems to work when I swap to the diffuse shader. Must be something I'm missing. Has anyone else had success at achieving this?

Update: Looks like this is an issue with the built-in transparent/diffuse shader specific to our project, probably render queue order. Everything works as expected if dumped into an empty scene. The email support looks very promising and fills me with confidence.

I requested for beta version of your API and i already got it and i tested it Unity 3.5 and 4.0 pro vesion, but i am constantly getting error. There error message saying "DllNotFoundException". I imported a unity package in a new project and follow your instruction step by step. I already have Plugin and streaming Assets folders in my Assets. I also checked there is "CoherentUI_WrapperNet.dll" also present in my plugin folder.

So what i m doing wrong. Here is the screen shot of my scene...

Click to expand...

The problem was solved: Coherent UI requires the June 2010 DirectX redistributable. I'm very sorry we didn't state that clearly in the documentation - it's mentioned only on the website. Will update the docs.

Holy mother of god, this is exactly what I've been looking for!
I first found Scaleform for Unity, but I cringed at the price ($300 per seat per platform, not even including the cost of Adobe Flash)
This seems like an incredible alternative to Scaleform. Plus we can just develop in standard HTML (which is designed for complex user interfaces, perhaps more so than Flash!).

EDIT: So far seems like it's pretty damn seamless.
Doesn't look like it supports Android yet, but as long as it's being worked on I'd be happy to use this for my game's UI

Holy mother of god, this is exactly what I've been looking for!
I first found Scaleform for Unity, but I cringed at the price ($300 per seat per platform, not even including the cost of Adobe Flash)
This seems like an incredible alternative to Scaleform. Plus we can just develop in standard HTML (which is designed for complex user interfaces, perhaps more so than Flash!).

EDIT: So far seems like it's pretty damn seamless.
Doesn't look like it supports Android yet, but as long as it's being worked on I'd be happy to use this for my game's UI

The Unity license says "Yearly, per Seat"; what does this mean exactly? It'll be $159 per year per seat? That seams a bit much as there is plenty of acceptable UI alternatives available. Does this mean it won't be on the asset store as on asset store there are no subscription based assets.